Islands of Plastic

​ Islands of Plastic

The search for the missing Malaysian plane, which we are hearing very little about now that the black box has quit pinging, has generated some disturbing photographs bringing to light a completely different reality - huge islands of plastic debris floating like enormous man-made lily pads on the ocean's surface. Then, just a few days ago I saw a video on Facebook that was equally disturbing, dead birds on Midway Island, far from any land mass, which, when dissected, revealed that a large part of their diet consisted of plastic bottle caps and other small bits of plastic junk. What in the world are we doing... to our oceans, to our wildlife, to our environment? When will we take responsibility for our overuse of non-biodegradable materials? Will we ever trade our conveniences for good stewardship of our only planet?

   

I have long been appalled at the amount of over-packaging we in North America seem to be hooked on. We can't buy a bag of cookies, we must have each cookie in a separate baggy and, along with an individual fruit cup, we pop them into a lunch box for the kids. Simple - no mess, no bother, no clean-up. Plastic cartons are now used for baked goods, lunch meats, fruit and vegetable trays, salads, sandwiches, even pre-cooked chickens. We buy a small number of tablets in a plastic bottle that would hold three times as many attached to a heavy piece of cardboard by an impermeable and nearly impossible to open plastic casing. What used to be packaged in cellophane is now packaged in lightweight but very strong plastic, requiring much strength or a scissors to open. Christmas toys now require a side cutter to release them from their molded plastic casings, the debris sending mountains of plastic garbage bags to the land fills. And then there's the new kids on the block, the one cup at a time coffee makers. These convenient appliances provide perfectly tuned to the individual single cups of java, at nearly the cost of a restaurant coffee, brewed through a tiny pre-filled plastic cuplet which could be recyclable but is cast aside due to difficulty of cleaning, both by individuals and by recycling companies. They do market reusable filters which we could fill with our own fresh ground coffee, but how many of us take the time to do that?

These are small things, but put small things in a pile and small begins to encircle the globe! Then to this add larger indestructible items. What can we do with all of this? Bury, dump, burn and release noxious gasses? - - - Recycling is better when it actually happens, but how about boycott? Sure, there are reasons for some of this packaging - breakage, loss of tiny parts, shipping, safety from tampering. But I think over-packaging is for the most part consumer driven and accepted, and because of this, it is our responsibility to become more discerning consumers. Instead, with our buying habits, we are saying we love the convenience. We may gripe about the difficulty of opening some of this packaging, but we gripe to ourselves, to our spouse. We may shake our heads and think about over-packaging, but we still buy the item and we never take the time to complain to the source. Discriminate buying is easier than recycling. We need to go out of our way to purchase goods that are responsibly packaged, and barring our ability to do that (not available, too expensive for our budget), we must accept the responsibility to recycle everything we possibly can, and we need to teach our children so that their future won't be buried in junk! An e-mail to companies who are the worst abusers of common sense in the packaging domain could help as well. If a sufficient number of people cared enough to do this, good marketers should listen and begin to produce biodegradable packaging. They could, after all, advertise what good, caring companies they really are, and might boost product sales as a result.

   

Don't just think, it's time to act. We are the ones that need to stop these practices. We are the ones who need to act, not the other guy - you know that guy who isn't as busy as we are? Not that other guy - ME and YOU!